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Tuesday, March 7, 2017

The truth of an underwhelmed would be writer

The past few years I have written so many words. Between my personal journals and my creative writing pursuits I have probably logged in excess of 100K, 200K words. Serious!

Back in 2014 I WON NaNoWriMo. I may have already mentioned this fact several times. I won't lie I was super proud of this achievement.

As for the story - well I spent 28 days writing a fairly (in my opinion: mediocre) mystery type fantasy. It began strongly, I fell in love with my lead characters as they played out a mini secondary love story on the sidelines. Then. STOP! The story came to a screaming halt. Brakes squealing, burnt rubber drifting across the air. 50,000 words later, I wrote myself to the middle section and found I was out of my depth.

A change of scenery - heck I changed the laws of the universe, there were a whole cast of NEW characters who were neither human nor beast. I floundered. I kept making notations, return to this section and add this, this and this! Go there and add that. "what were you THINKING"

My neat little mystery became a horror film.

{the horror mainly the RED pen that I used to correct my many meanderings of words}

While I did have the very best intentions to actually plan the story and draft it, the sheer volume of words buried me. I then began to question every single word I hand wrote and wondered if I simply wasted the entire month?

What was I thinking trying to write a fantasy when I don't even particularly like reading fantasy!

So I filed it. One day I will see if I can de-frankenstein it &/or restructure it to a small series.

What I realised is I set out to do what I planned to do - I wrote 50,000 words in 30 28 days. I reached NaNo stardom. The winners circle was heady!

During October 2016... the whispers NaNo, NaNo, NaNo niggled at me. I dreamt of pens scrawling across blank pages. I envisaged holding the trophy high at the end "I would like to thank.."
I went out and purchased new notebooks and new pens. Internally I groaned at myself. Writing like a crazy woman was just plain... crazy.

Until I came to the conclusion I had ZERO clue what I would write about.

November 1st arrived... 27 days later (YES 27!) I finished a story. 50,000 words. Not including THE END. Which I also wrote. You see this time I actually wrote the beginning, the middle and the end. Then realised I have a skeleton with no muscles. Or blood. Or flesh. Eh. That is another entry for another day in the future!

Why am I musing about these past goals today? Well CampNaNo begins on April 1st. Of course I signed up immediately. Count me in. Take my money already.

Hold up. What will I write?

And that folks - is the end of this little tale. Now you may have a small iota of how I have been feeling since my ill-fated win of 2014. It is frustrating. Yet it would appear not so frustrating that I am willing to begin writing ANOTHER story. Perhaps one day I will actually look at what I have written and look at some kind of publishing. Or perhaps they will languish until some long lost relative discovers them on some weird little USB stick and finds an ancient Mac Computer and begins reading my crazy pipe dreams.

6 comments:

Remember WOW Car? It's where we first 'met'. I loved it and I loved reading your pieces for it. Maybe go back and re-read a few of your old post for inspiration, I'm sure you'll find something there. Best of luck with it and keep us update! x

End'o the road & beyond

Mum. Wife. Writer. Dreamer.

My place in the world to scribble my past, write my present and draw my future - along the way, sharing the road I am travelling to find ME. Behind me, the road was rocky and filled with bends and potholes. Ahead there are steep hills to climb and forks to explore. It may not be paved in yellow brick, but it is a path to the end'o the road & beyond... Destination as yet unknown.